What Linux needs to improve for the desktop | The Coffeehouse

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

The XP logo critria places restrictions on non-client drawing and other UI things, Office 2007 (and WMP10) violated that rule.

Vista's criteria changed it so non-client drawing was acceptable, but I do wonder if they changed that rule because of Office, and not Office taking advantage of a change in the rules.

AndyC

In reply to W3bbo

#Jun 27th @ 1:30 PM

Not true. The "Designed for Windows XP" logo requirements state:

"Applications that do not completely replace the caption bar appearance must use a standard Windows title bar, including the standard buttons. Applications should not render anything custom into the standard caption area."

Only a mix and match of trying to draw on the non-client area is prohibited (because it can clash with different visual styles), Office 2007 completely replaces the title bar and as such, would pass.

Bass
www.spreadfirefox.com/5years/

In reply to W3bbo

#Jun 27th @ 11:20 AM

Gnome and KDE have different philoposphy of what makes a good UI, Gnome is all about simplicity, they count the # of interactive widgets on a window. Something like more then 5 (not including OK/cancel) in most windows is considered too complicated. Smiley Basically Gnome says: simple = usable. It's like the Google doctrine.

KDE is more of opposite. They think giving as much power as possible in the GUI is the best way to do usability. Because you know, if some feature isn't click-able to someone maybe you made their experience less usable. So typically KDE apps are more widget heavy, with less white space then Gnome apps. KDE says functionality = usable.

KDE in general is less HIG crazy, I believe they do have a HIG, but a violation of the HIG is a serious thing in Gnome that could get your app kicked out of the official Gnome desktop. Really my experience with Gnome development is the core team takes consistency to an almost religious level, which pisses some people who don't like the rigid UI guidelines. This also made Manip's post almost funny to me. Hell Gnome ships their own web browser partly/mostly because Firefox violates the HIG, and they won't have that kind of blatent UI abuse in their desktop. Smiley

I don't know who is right, they might both be in a way (there is no right answer to usability IMO), but total consistency between KDE and Gnome isn't going to happen. You might as well ask for consistency between Mac OS X and Windows, it's about as likely. Scared

I agree it's a problem though, but not something that could seriously imbede the Linux desktop. I think there are more problems like hardware drivers and software compatability that are far more serious. Linux STILL doesn't work with a lot of hardware, it's been getting better, but it's doesn't support as many consumer devices as Windows does. And applications are a problem, I think Linux needs Win32 support, but unfortunately Win32 is so huge it's a monumental task. If Linux had good hardware drivers and perfect Win32 support I think it would take off quickly.

joechung

It's ironic that many of Locutus' points about Linux's weaknesses as a desktop OS could also be used as points for Windows Vista's weaknesses as a desktop OS relative to Windows XP.

contextfree

In reply to Bass

#Jun 27th @ 4:58 PM

I dunno that consistency is a goal that's fully obtainable in the end, on any platform. Are the desktop apps I use consistent with the web apps I use? Should they be? I use Emacs on Windows, should they be consist with each other?

May28th2018
May 28th, 2018

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Jun 27th @ 11:55 AM

Use Linux with Android, and you will see that Linux can be a very slick and functional OS that's easy to develop for. The nice thing about Android is that millions of people are using Linux and not a one of them knows it or cares.

Android is probably the most used Linux distribution on earth right now. The Dalvik SDK with Eclipse is slick too. It has far more functional API than a regular Linux system because the hardware is built in. You know what you can access and how, and how to get permissions from the user.

I also saw a demo at a certain Google event where they were running Android on a desktop. Perhaps this may be the future???

Google has kind of kicked the door open, and they're here to stay in the OS world.

joechung

In reply to ManipUni

#Jun 27th @ 5:16 AM

Re: consistency, hogwash.

Have you compared Internet Explorer to Office to native Win32 applications to Windows Forms applications lately? A common complaint about writing UI in .NET is that there are now two ways to build a UI, and neither is consistent with each other or even with the native way of writing UI, which changes with each operating system revision.

Applications on Mac OS X can vary in appearance depending on whether they've been programmed to Carbon, Cocoa, or some other UI API. Mac users complain about how Firefox doesn't "feel" like a native Mac OS X application, for example. A similar complaint could be made about Office 2008 for Mac -- which has the double fault of not looking like either a native Mac OS X application or Office 2007 on Windows.

In any case, UI consistency is only good insofar as it supports ease of use. It isn't good to be consistent if you're copying something awful. That's why there is such a variety of inconsistent user interfaces to begin with. Consensus has not been reached, and there's room for improvement.

matthews

It's not so much the desktop environment, as it is the fact that there are like 4 flawed choices of desktop environment, all of which are flawed in their own unique and annoying way. This is the only thing consistent right across everything in FLOSS/Linux; there are a whole bunch of choices given to you, none of which are any good. Why choose a distro when none of them are really adequate? Why can't there be just one good open-source Microsoft Excel clone, instead of several horrible options? Why does there need to be yet another god damned sound API, or another god awful 2D open-source graphics driver?

Another problem is the breakage that occurs pretty much constantly. A new kernel point release gets pushed through apt? Something’s going to break, and you're going to spend the requisite hour or two figuring out how to fix it, until you finally find some post on a forum (the 8^th you’ve looked at) that solves your problem. Samba get updated? Well odds are the new version makes some small change to the way it reads config files, and suddenly your network shares are open to everyone on the network. Upgrading to a whole new release of Ubuntu of Fedora? Well you'd better hold onto your hats, and hope that wifi, sound, graphics, and flash don't all break at once.

How about Linux as a platform? How can a developer of a closed source application (say a game) be expected to target Linux, when the core bits in the system gets slaughtered with each point release? Not just the kernel, the core libraries and X11 do the exact same thing. Linux isn't so much a platform as it is a plate of spagatti, that might just run Firefox if it was custom compiled with a whole bunch of hooks for the specific point release of your distro, but don't you dare try to run the binary provided by Mozilla of a new version or you're sure to run into a world of hurt. Yes, if you completely lock down the system and make sure to only update everything very carefully on your own, like on a phone, an ebook reader, or a server, you can get a stable platform to target apps to, but that's nowhere near the reality of Linux on the desktop. Ever tried to run an old game (that is, more than a couple years old) on Linux? I don’t think I was ever able to get Doom 3 to run.

I abandoned Linux almost 2 years ago because I got tired of the constant fiddling and sacrifices I was making as a user; I had sh*t to do, and after 3 years on that garbage, I gave up, installed Vista, and have never been happier or more productive. The last thing I need is to watch OpenOffice, X, or my newly broken nvidia driver (thanks to some daily update somewhere) crash while I'm in the middle of writing a term paper -- again.

Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

I'd say consistency is important, but not vital. Keeping stuff consistent makes the overall look easier on the eye and, most importantly, greatly speeds up the learning process when using a new application. However, it's not the end-all of UI design. If you consider consistency as dogma, you'd never be able to experiment and innovate with new ideas, like the Ribbon UI or, heck, tabbed browsers, and that way you'd never be able to improve the way people use computers.

Ubuntu

In reply to matthews

#Jun 28th @ 6:02 AM

Dude, everything you wrote in your post is BS.

1. Could you be more specific and tell us which are the features that you miss in OpenOffice so much that you think it's 'horrible'?

2. If nvidia and Ati-AMD open-sourced their drivers there would be no reason to have an open-source 2D driver

3. If your kernel gets updated you may still choose in your boot menu to boot using the old one - didn't you notice that?

4. If you update to a newer kernel you should expect for the supported devices coverage to increase rather than decrease (the opposite to Windows)

I had sh*t to do, and after 3 years on that garbage, I gave up, installed Vista

You mean that WinXP prior to SP2 (at that point in time) was a better choice? It had poor stability and serious security issues.

I won't comment on the rest of your post because it's simply ridiculous - you have your agenda you want to put forward and there is no point in arguing.

contextfree

In reply to Ubuntu

#Jun 28th @ 2:18 PM

my mom (who disliked MS Word and used to like WordPerfect) thought OpenOffice Writer was like everything she hated about MS Word, but slower and with an even clunkier interface. this was as of 2.0, I dunno if it's improved since. Personally I also dislike both (though I do like the new Ribbon interface) and would rather use something like TeX for my writing. I'm sure OO meets many people's needs though (I guess it meets my needs too, those being "read the occasional MS Office document when I'm forced to do so")

matthews

In reply to Ubuntu

#Jun 28th @ 2:18 PM

1. Could you be more specific and tell us which are the features that you miss in OpenOffice so much that you think it's 'horrible'?

Ribbon? Lots of built in templates? Not being slow as all hell? Extensibility that doesn't suck? Spell checking that isn't broken? Grammar checking? Help files that don't suck? Howabout OneNote and Visio? Or true support for (like it or not) the most commonly used file formats (docx, xlsx, pptx, etc etc)?

2. If nvidia and Ati-AMD open-sourced their drivers there would be no reason to have an open-source 2D driver

Yes, and if Microsoft open sourced Office 2007 there would be no need to have garbage like OpenOffice. Hell, ATI even released the spec for their drivers and there's still a bunch of idiots reinventing the wheel and making new drivers from scratch that don't work.

3. If your kernel gets updated you may still choose in your boot menu to boot using the old one - didn't you notice that?

Yes, you can hack around the breaking changes that are thrown in for no good. That's exactly my point; you have to hack and fiddle way too god damn much.

4. If you update to a newer kernel you should expect for the supported devices coverage to increase rather than decrease (the opposite to Windows)

The only reason for this is because Linux relies on a mono-kernel design where every driver runs in kernel space. Device support in Vista had little to with kernel so much as the complete re-writing of the sound, wifi, and printing stacks, not to mention the new driver framework.

You mean that WinXP prior to SP2 (at that point in time) was a better choice? It had poor stability and serious security issues.

XP is terrible, and I still hate using it (thank god I use 7 RC at work), but I shouldn't have been so blind and should have used it instead of wasting my time dicking around with Linux. Once I realized how good Vista is, I gave up on Linux.